Award Winner

November 2017

Shawn Proffitt

Corporate Web Manager

Shawn has worked for the city of Charlotte, NC since 1997. He started in the Web division and now works as the Corporate Web Manager, touching many departments and functions. He championed SeamlessDocs and spearheaded the training and adoption of the solution internally. The way he performs his duties as Corporate Web Manager is one of the reasons Government is Beautiful!

Charlotte, NC

Seth speaks to the SeamlessDocs team in the February installment of the Seamless Speaker Series

Service is Beautiful

Q&A with this municipal champion

How did you get involved with local government?

I studied Political Science and Urban Studies, and always sort of wanted to be involved with government. Around 1997, I was looking for a position with the City of Charlotte, and they were offering a contract position to build and develop website content. I learned how to code and was hired as a contractor. That eventually led them to create a position for webmaster, hired me into that job and I've been here ever since.

How did you first hear about SeamlessGov?

We were looking for a forms tool to replace what we were using internally, which was basically a homemade form builder based on 90’s era engineering.. We looked at SeamlessDocs among several other vendors, in search of a replacement. [SeamlessDocs was] hands down the best option from a user-standpoint.

In addition, Code for America had selected us as one of the cities to focus on in 2014, so the fact SeamlessDocs graduated from their program was a helpful factor. After bringing all the stakeholders together, we voted unanimously on SeamlessDocs.

Why did you decide to go paperless?

A couple years back we were looking for a replacement for our forms tool. We were using one we built from scratch. The "homegrown" setup wasn't easy to use and not responsive. Overall, it was pretty limited. We recognized on our part that we needed something better, both for the outcome and actually managing it.

Paul accepts his Service is Beautiful Award from CEO & Founder Jonathon Ende

Seth accepts his Service is Beautiful Award from CEO & Founder Jonathon Ende

"The system we had before, didn’t allow for [Drag & Drop]. It was a very clunky way to do it and it would take hours and hours just to build a simple form. Once [other employees] realized they could Drag & Drop — that they could do it in minutes — they began looking for things to build!"

2,790 Submissions

17.7 Submissions per Form on Average

15 Minutes Saved per Form

697 Total Hours Saved

Cedar Hills Stats

47 Forms

2,201 Submissions

46.8 Submissions per Form on Average

15 Minutes Saved per Form

550 Total Hours Saved

(Submissions * Time Saved per Form = Total Time Saved)

What was implementation like?

It was a really easy process because it was really easy to use. Michael walked us through how to off-board the old forms and onboard the new ones. Within a couple of weeks I had a bevy of forms ready to go to organize into folders and things like that.

Personally I created a public records request form. Then, individual departments just started creating their own. [From there] it just organically grew; I didn’t have to do much of anything. The rest of it we just figured out on our own.

The forms were actually ready to go before we even launched our new site.

One form or process that's been changed by SeamlessGov?

For external forms, it replaced the clunky "homegrown" solution. Internally, it replaced SharePoint and InfoPath.

Favorite SeamlessGov Feature?

What I love the most is the user information. What link they came from, their device's OS.

It gives me a lot of information that we didn’t have before - it tells me a little more about the people who are using the forms themselves.

Also being able to Drag & Drop was huge. The system we had before, didn’t allow for [Drag & Drop]. It was a very clunky way to do it and it would take hours and hours just to build a simple form. Once [other employees] realized they could Drag & Drop — that they could do it in minutes — they began looking for things to build!

Advice for another municipality just starting out with SeamlessGov?

Be prepared to have distributed content creation - [SeamlessDocs] is very simple and people like using it.

People might be a little bit shy about technology - so I’d say to them to not be shy and be prepared for its ease of use. Give some thought about how you’re gonna organize your forms because [the moment SeamlessDocs is implemented] you’re gonna have a lot of people wanting to create them.

Andrew Liebelt

Success Manager

Andrew is a Client Success Manager at SeamlessDocs. He comes from another SaaS company that was acquired by Citrix, and attended Appalachian State University. Andrew is a North Carolina native who has traveled, lived around the world, and has settled in the most beautiful city in the country - New York! Personally he loves writing, filmmaking, cooking and helping SeamlessDocs' partners make their citizen interactions more beautiful!